Revisiting 1980s Cleveland Child Abuse scandal

[CirrusCumulus]

Feminist campaigner Beatrix Campbell has written a new book (she's also previously written about the so-called Satanic Panic child abuse). She's going to speak about it under The Woman's Place banner. This is a difficult subject and what happened and why is very contested. Hopefully agencies have got better at protecting children. But these waves of abuse (Cleveland, Orkney) seem a bit of a historical aberration with lots of poor practice on all sides. Haven't read the book yet but interested especially in child protection perspectives on the impact of Cleveland. And from anyone who was around at the time from that area. I wonder how genuine abuse was dealt with in the aftermath.

womansplaceuk.org/event/a-womans-place-will-not-be-silent/

Horrific and very much swept under the carpet. I was born in 1985 in Cleveland and resident ever since. I had procedures in the hospital as a baby but thankfully never taken away. Tempted to get my med reports to see if I ever came under the care of these Dr's. Never heard of this until a few years ago despite being very close to it and the age group affected which seems really strange. I do remember my Mum being wary of me 'being taken away' and she has raised concerns when my children were little about the possibility of trips to A&E being looked at by SS.

@StrawberryTartIet I think lessons were learnt and I've found our hvs to be pretty sensible. but yes, the fear as a child was there and came back as a parent.

I read an account of one child who she did save from abuse and saw her as a saviour. I think it was so badly mishandled that that child was sent back home anyway. The whole thing was a mess.

It all sounds stressful for anyone who has children around that time. The only positive perhaps was Cleveland was followed by the 1989 Children Act which required agencies to work more closely together and stated that 'children are best looked after by their family unless intervention in family life is essential'.

Yes, hugely problematic and dangerous.

Im a bit concerned about this womans book.

I used to live next to Marietta Higgs when I was a child living in Middlesbrough. They were quite a boho middleclass family and I think her husband was a stay at home dad. I remember reporters knocking on our door asking questions about them (we didn't respond) and then reporters climbing our trees to take pictures of their house.

In the last few years I read that Higgs and Wyatt went on a short course in Leeds led by Jane Wynne where they were told how to look for signs of abuse and I personally believe that when they returned they started to overdiagnose patients.

The RAD method may be one sign of abuse but it was wrongly taken as 100% proof that abuse had taken place.

I was working in medical journalism at the time of the Cleveland scandal, and talking to a lot of senior doctors as a matter of course.

The general opinion was that the paediatrician, Marietta Higgs, was totally mistaken. She became obsessed with a clinical observation - reflex anal dilation - she was certain was caused by young children being sodomised.

As a result a lot of children who had not been abused were removed from their parents. As I recall the authorities swooped on the families in the early hours, taking sobbing small children away. To be fair if they believed the children were being grossly abused you can see why rescuing them would be urgent. However as the great majority were not being abused you can imagine how traumatising it was.

I don't remember all the details after all this time but I do recall the doctors I spoke to were appalled by the business

Iirc this case and Orkney were two of the catalysts for mistrust of social workers - as in any involvement by social workers meant children being taken away.

Didnt she also have a strange theory about children disliking the smell of tuna?

Or have I completely made that up?

People with a slightly Fortean bent (you know who you are) will also recognise the trope of Bogus Social Workers hanging around the edges of this one.

@PrawnofthePatriarchy If there was any substance to the diagnostic technique, you would expect there to be a rollout all over the country. And clusters of abuse in similarly deprived geographical areas. None of it stacks up - but again, I think this new book argues that it was (mostly?) justified

@Calllalllama That's real six degrees of separation stuff! One thing is that she must've been quite a young Consultant at the time. Where were the senior clinical leaders?!

@soupfiend The author spoke about her book at last filia feminist conference (I didn't go but saw tweets) and the book has praise from lots of prominent women's rights people. That why I've found it all so befuddling. It seems a bit ...cranky, at best.

I was a child in Cleveland at the time, and a child in my class was taken in the middle of the night. My mother responded by keeping me off the radar, to the extent that I wasn't taken to hospital with what turned out to be a broken foot, and never had my eyes tested until I went myself before learning to drive (and finding out that my sight was too poor to drive without glasses!)

At the time, it seemed heartbreaking that kids were ripped from families. I look back and wonder, where are those kids, what testimony do they have?
I saw some parents interview from back then and it didn't sit right. I wonder.